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<h1>Generic Database Output Module (omlibdbi)</h1>
<p><b>Module Name:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; omlibdbi</b></p>
<p><b>Author: </b>Rainer Gerhards
&lt;rgerhards@adiscon.com&gt;</p>
<p><b>Description</b>:</p>
<p>This modules supports a large number of database systems via <a href="http://libdbi.sourceforge.net/">libdbi</a>.
Libdbi abstracts the database layer and provides drivers for many
systems. Drivers are available via the <a href="http://libdbi-drivers.sourceforge.net/">libdbi-drivers</a>
project. As of this writing, the following drivers are available:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.firebird.sourceforge.net/">Firebird/Interbase</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.freetds.org/">FreeTDS</a>
(provides access to <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/sql">MS
SQL Server</a> and <a href="http://www.sybase.com/products/informationmanagement/adaptiveserverenterprise">Sybase</a>)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.mysql.com/">MySQL</a>
(also
supported via the native ommysql plugin in rsyslog)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.postgresql.org/">PostgreSQL</a>(also
supported via the native
ommysql plugin in rsyslog)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.sqlite.org/">SQLite/SQLite3</a></li>
</ul>
<p>The following drivers are in various stages of completion:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://ingres.com/">Ingres</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.hughes.com.au/">mSQL</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.oracle.com/">Oracle</a></li>
</ul>
<p>These drivers seem to be quite usable, at
least from an rsyslog point of view.</p>
<p>Libdbi provides a slim layer between rsyslog and the actual
database engine. We have not yet done any performance testing (e.g.
omlibdbi vs. ommysql) but honestly believe that the performance impact
should be irrelevant, if at all measurable. Part of that assumption is
that rsyslog just does the "insert" and most of the time is spent
either in the database engine or rsyslog itself. It's hard to think of
any considerable time spent in the libdbi abstraction layer.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Setup</span></p>
<p>In order for this plugin to work, you need to have libdbi, the
libdbi driver for your database backend and the client software for
your database backend installed. There are libdbi packages for many
distributions. Please note that rsyslogd requires a quite recent
version (0.8.3) of libdbi. It may work with older versions, but these
need some special ./configure options to support being called from a
dlopen()ed plugin (as omlibdbi is). So in short, you probably save you
a lot of headache if you make sure you have at least libdbi version
0.8.3 on your system.
</p>
<p><b>Configuration Directives</b>:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">$ActionLibdbiDriverDirectory /path/to/dbd/drivers</span><br>This
is a global setting. It points libdbi to its driver directory. Usually,
you do not need to set it. If you installed libdbi-driver's at a
non-standard location, you may need to specify the directory here. If
you are unsure, do <span style="font-weight: bold;">not</span> use this configuration directive. Usually, everything works just fine.<strong></strong></li><li><strong>$ActionLibdbiDriver drivername</strong><br>
Name of the dbidriver to use, see libdbi-drivers documentation. As a
quick excerpt, at least those were available at the time of this
writiting "mysql" (suggest to use ommysql instead), "firebird" (Firbird
and InterBase), "ingres", "msql", "Oracle", "sqlite", "sqlite3",
"freetds" (for Microsoft SQL and Sybase) and "pgsql" (suggest to use
ompgsql instead).</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">$ActionLibdbiHost
hostname</span><br>
The host to connect to.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">$ActionLibdbiUserName
user</span><br>
The user used to connect to the database.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">$ActionlibdbiPassword</span><br>
That user's password.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">$ActionlibdbiDBName
db</span><br>
The database that shall be written to.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">selector
line: :omlibdbi:<span style="font-style: italic;">;template</span></span><br>
executes the recently configured omlibdbi action. The ;template part is
optional. If no template is provided, a default template is used (which
is currently optimized for MySQL - sorry, folks...)</li>
</ul>
<b>Caveats/Known Bugs:</b>
<p>You must make sure that any templates used for omlibdbi
properly escape strings. This is usually done by supplying the SQL (or
STDSQL) option to the template. Omlibdbi rejects templates without this
option for security reasons. However, omlibdbi does not detect if you
used the right option for your backend. Future versions of rsyslog
(with full&nbsp;expression&nbsp; support) will provide advanced
ways of handling this situation. So far, you must be careful. The
default template provided by rsyslog is suitable for MySQL, but not
necessarily for your database backend. Be careful!</p>
<p>If you receive the rsyslog error message "libdbi or libdbi
drivers not present on this system" you may either not have libdbi and
its drivers installed or (very probably) the version is earlier than
0.8.3. In this case, you need to make sure you have at least 0.8.3 and
the libdbi driver for your database backend present on your system.</p><p>I
do not have most of the database supported by omlibdbi in my lab. So it
received limited cross-platform tests. If you run into troubles, be
sure the let us know at <a href="http://www.rsyslog.com">http://www.rsyslog.com</a>.</p>
<p><b>Sample:</b></p>
<p>The following sample writes all syslog messages to the
database "syslog_db" on mysqlsever.example.com. The server is MySQL and
being accessed under the account of "user" with password "pwd" (if you
have empty passwords, just remove the $ActionLibdbiPassword line).<br>
</p>
<textarea rows="15" cols="60">$ModLoad omlibdbi
$ActionLibdbiDriver mysql
$ActionLibdbiHost mysqlserver.example.com
$ActionLibdbiUserName user
$ActionLibdbiPassword pwd
$ActionLibdbiDBName syslog_db
*.* :omlibdbi:
</textarea>
<p>[<a href="rsyslog_conf.html">rsyslog.conf overview</a>]
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<p><font size="2">This documentation is part of the
<a href="http://www.rsyslog.com/">rsyslog</a>
project.<br>
Copyright © 2008 by <a href="http://www.gerhards.net/rainer">Rainer
Gerhards</a> and
<a href="http://www.adiscon.com/">Adiscon</a>.
Released under the GNU GPL version 3 or higher.</font></p>
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